Apple's new MacBook is a rival to the iPad Air

This article was first published in the September 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online

How we tested

WIRED used Geekbench 3 to put the MacBook's processing power through its paces. This is a cross-platform tool that measures the computer's ability to carry out real-world tasks and investigates the true potential of each of the cores in a multi-core system. It also uses a stress test to measure the system's stability. Further pressure was applied with real-world multitasking, including editing with Adobe Lightroom and video streaming in multiple browsers.

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Having no extraordinary computing capabilities and with a starting price of £1,049, the new MacBook isn't exactly an impulse purchase. Indeed, for many, this notebook won't even begin to make sense. But since when was that a concern for Apple fans?

With such a skinny chassis, interior space is at a premium. To ensure every millimetre is used, most components have been reconfigured. The result is a beautiful feat of engineering.

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Given its price, it would have been a serious misstep to not equip this device with a Retina display. Thankfully, Apple supplies the full 226ppi. Not only is the screen sharp and bright, but the bezel is super thin, which adds to the overall delicate look. Despite this, it doesn't feel fragile, even when open - WIRED carried it around in one hand and didn't detect any flex. At just 0.92kg, it is light enough to be a constant companion.

The keyboard is likely to divide opinion. The new butterfly mechanism that sits underneath the keys provides improved stability, but the lack of travel feels undeniably strange at first. That said, you do get used to it -- it even reduced WIRED's typos.

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The large trackpad is the recipient of some of Apple's newest ideas -- the Haptic Engine provides tactile feedback such as a double-click sensation or action notifications; Force Touch senses the level of pressure applied, adding subtlety and depth to your gestures. In practice, though, WIRED kept either forgetting about these, or finding them to be not as effective as one might expect.

Yet for all this innovation, a surprisingly weak set of components sits under the hood -- a 1.1GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor, 8GB of on-board memory and 256GB of flash storage. As a result, the off-the-peg MacBook is a bit of a wimp, and is easily outpaced by the current MacBook Air. The iPad Air -- which also sits nicely in this super-slim group - is half the price, but can't match the MacBook for practicality. The MacBook isn't noticeably sluggish in use, but nor is it lightning-fast either - it can handle most web browsing and documents, but you can forget editing raw image files. For the Geekbench 3 benchmarking tests, the MacBook gets a single-core score of 2,414 and a multi-core score of 4,562. For context, this puts the MacBook below Geekbench's baseline scores of 2,500 and 5,112, which are from the mid-2011 Mac mini.

Apple has bravely given the MacBook only a single port -- the USB-C -- which it hopes will become the new standard across all platforms

Wilma

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Of all the MacBook's features, it is the ports -- or lack thereof -- that have grabbed headlines. Whereas the Air, depending on model, can have two USB 3 ports, a Thunderbolt 2 and an SD card slot, plus a headphone socket and MagSafe 2, the MacBook does away with all (save the headphones hole) for a single USB-C that takes care of both charging and connectivity. The downside is you'll almost certainly need an adaptor if you want more than one thing plugged in, although we managed without quite nicely. On the plus side, as it's USB, you can top up your MacBook's power from an external battery, as you would your iPhone. And speaking of battery life, WIRED got an impressive full day out of it, despite using the notoriously power-hungry Chrome browser.

So, who is the MacBook actually for? Despite its expense, it's most likely to be a capable second computer, useful for mobile work (and to impress in meetings as a trophy laptop), while the heavy lifting gets done elsewhere. Is it underpowered? Yes. Do we still want one? Oh, yes. 8/10From £1,049